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5.30.2012

In case you missed it, the President of the United States now claims the authority to assassinate anyone he chooses, for any reason, at any time, anywhere on the planet. This power is not checked or balanced in any way by any sort of due-process, warrant, judicial review, or even a national security finding. This arbitrary jurisdiction actually came into law under the Bush administration, but it does not appear to have been exercised by him. Instead, President Obama was the first to take this prerogative, and became the first President in history to assassinate a natural-born American citizen.

Despite the glaring contradiction with the Constitution and any sense of civilized justice, there will be those who justify Executive murder as "necessary" to fight Al-Qaeda. There are several key points that those folks ignore though, as apologists for despotism.

To begin with, we must first accept that assassination is even an effective tool in combating enemies of the United States. All moral questions aside, we must assume that a target would be better off dead, rather than captured. Assassination has, of course, been employed for as long men have practiced the art of war, but in this day and age it is much more complex than simply a matter of eliminating a famous enemy. In the case of Osama bin-Laden for example, taking him alive would have been preferable for a number of reasons, including intelligence extraction. There is much more to be considered aside from tactical doctrine too.

Now that the precedent has been set, there is no guarantee of any kind that the President will use this power exclusively against Al-Qaeda. After all, without so much as a hearing before a judge, we have no way of knowing if in fact these people he is ordering assassinated are even terrorists at all, of any kind. He could just as easily use this power to silence political opponents, business competitors, personal enemies, or even as a tool to keep secrets from being made public.

Even when considering assassination against targets said to be affiliated with terrorism, we have to understand how very loosely that can be defined.

With drone strikes the preferred method of the President's assassination program, it is clear that all it takes now to be a terrorist is simply being in the wrong place at the right time. Meanwhile, the United States has actually armed and supported Al-Qaeda terrorists in Libya, and now in Syria. That is, if one even accepts that there is any such thing as Al-Qaeda in the first place.

So understanding these few points, we see that the justifications do not actually stand the test of applied logic. Even if assassinations were to be a matter of some necessity, against any enemy, there is still no reason why the President alone must be the sole arbiter of that necessity. Nevertheless, that is what we have come to. In a nation founded on principles of limited government, distribution of power through checks-and-balances, liberty, and due-process, we now have a President who keeps a secret "kill list" of people he thinks should die. People who are not even accused of any crime, by any court of law. This list includes Americans, and even teenaged girls.

Be sure to read the in-depth expose on the subject by the New York Times: